A New Year's Forecast

Both terrorist acts in Essentuki and in "National" hotel have all been forecasted a year ago. While browsing through piles of paperwork concerning the recent terrorist act near "National" hotel located right in the heart of Moscow, I could not help but notice that I have already seen it happen somewhere. What is it? About a year ago, I was interviewing a fortuneteller who mentioned something about this event. Precisely, I had a Christmas interview with an astrologer Lina Savanskaya. It was called “Pestilence, hunger and dollar devaluation-this is all nothing.” Our talk was mainly about the upcoming “black sheep’s” year, which usually follows by “white sheep’s” year right after 12 years. Apparently, a black sheep is weaker. So, if USSR collapsed in the year of “white sheep”, this time we all witness the Iraqi conflict and a major political overturn in Georgia. As for Russia, the country did not really get to suffer much, except for the fact that both parties “Yabloko” and “SPS” did not quite make it to the State Duma as a result of recent elections. Then again, the country is changing. Neither one of these events on the political arena did not bother me much however. It was the following phrase that caused my “dйjа vu”. “…in November and December one should be cautious of man-caused accidents in public transportation as well as in production (as well as in transporting oil and gas)…and terrorist acts.” Thank God, no accidents dealing with oil and gas transportation have been reported so far. As for terrorist acts…well, this is where things get rather complicated. First, there was a commuter train explosion in Essentuki. Recently, a terrible terrorist attack happened right at the heart of Moscow.It is also worth mentioning that an “oil” disaster did actually happen. On November 23, right by the town of Makensky, terrorists blasted an oil train. In addition, several oil drills were blown-up on November 15 as a result of another terrorist act in Grozny region. Several hectares of land were flooded with oil as a result of another oil pipeline accident in Ivanovsk region. Interestingly, Russian government managed to conceal all the information pertaining to this accident from mass media. We have only learnt about it recently. As it was later revealed, that there were 85 accidents on oilfields, 2,000 wear and tear accidents of multiple oil pipelines that happened in…November. The forecast was published on December 25 of last year. It read the following, “…beginning from the second half of May, the economic situation in the US as well as in some highly developed European countries will worsen. I would not want to mention rapid dollar devaluation or crises of world’s monetary system. However, planets indicate an extremely high possibility of this happening.” Interestingly, dollar’s fall happened right in May. It has been “falling” ever since. There was no crisis of world’s monetary system; but things do appear quite shaky. It is already December…we will see what this month brings. Ironically, it so happens that even most fortunate forecasts do not teach us much. We are simply too preoccupied with our own stuff.

More than 5.8 million people voted for Nicholas Maduro at the presidential election in Venezuela. This is more than a quarter of registered voters. Why did those people vote for the man, who, as Western media write, took Venezuela to the brink of collapse?